The present invention relates generally to communication systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods and systems for determining a location relevant to a communication device or a location relevant to a user associated with a communication device.
Wireless telephones, pagers and other communication devices typically communicate via wireless telecommunications networks. In recent years, a number of service systems have been implemented or proposed for wireless telecommunications networks which would provide a given service based on the locations of the devices communicating via these networks. Such location-based service systems would provide a service in relation to a given location. For example, such a service could locate the nearest ATM, gas station, bank, police station, or restaurant, in relation to the location.
Generally, the location relevant to the service is the location of the communication device, or specifically the location of the wireless transceiver. This location may be determined using automatic position determination technology such as cell and sector identification and GPS. However, different position determination technologies provide different levels of location accuracy.
For example, cell and sector identification locates a wireless transceiver to a general area such as that covered by a single base station. Moreover, cell and sector identification-based positioning is inadequate to accurately identify one specific location. Meanwhile, GPS can accurately locate a wireless transceiver in open, unobstructed environments. However, GPS presents technological challenges to identifying a location in an obstructed environment such as a city.
A location may also be determined using information input by the user. However, user-specified location may be inefficient. If the information is input as speech (e.g. a location spoken into a cellular phone), the location may be difficult to recognize, primarily due to constraints in speech recognition technology.
It would be desirable therefore, to provide an improved method for determining a location.